Contractors Budgeting and Estimate Spreadsheet
This spreadsheet will help you to manage and control your business financials while ensuring that you are recovering your costs of doing business and earn money to continue to grow your business.
When I first started my hardscaping business, I did not know what an overhead cost was or how to factor them into my estimate. I added up my material cost and closed my eyes walking through each part of the project and guessed how long it would take me at each stage to come to my labor cost. Though it seemed to work for me, it was time consuming and I did not know if this was covering my costs of doing business or not.
There was no formula to this process and it could not be repeated by any one else in my business. I knew I needed to create something that I could hire somebody to take over and simply create estimates without training them on my madness. It had to be a system that was simple. That is why over the years I have developed this spreadsheet to make sure that I am tracking my overhead expenses and factoring them into each job, that I know I am recovering my labor costs, that I am taking a salary, and that I know my business is earning a profit while charging appropriately for my material cost.
This spreadsheet is many years in the making and it is available to you as a one time fee.
The spreadsheet includes:
-
Overhead Expenses
-
Employees and Labor Costs
-
Production Rates and Labor Time
-
Materials and Cost of Sale
-
Estimate Totals
-
Job Costing
-
How-To Videos
Input all of your Overhead Expenses by following our set expenses and add your own as your business grows. From equipment and tools to the costs of doing business, we cover it all on our Overhead Expense page of our spreadsheet.
On our Employees page, you can input all of your salary and hourly wage earning employee’s information to be able to factor them into each of your projects to recover their earnings.
Input your production rates to be able to simply estimate a project based on how fast you have completed the same tasks in the past. This spreadsheet does not include a production rate tracker. Using these production rates, you can calculate how long it will take you to complete this project and the spreadsheet will automatically fill in the hours for your crew and calculate what you should be charging for your labor on the specific project you are estimating for. On the Labor Costs page, you will see that final number based on what hourly employees you assign to the project.
On the Materials page you can add the materials and their costs so that you can simply add them to any job on the Cost of Sale page to calculate how much the materials will cost you on the project.
With information completed regarding the length of your season, you will be provided with the final total of the project you just estimated for. On this final page, you can adjust different profit and labor burden percentages, as well as the taxes, to provide the final estimate number for the specific job that you are estimating for.
Just as important as knowing your numbers when you are calculating estimates to send out to your customers is comparing that estimate to how the project actually went and adjusting your estimation process from there. This is called job costing and is an important accounting method to businesses that send out project-based estimate work.
Our How-To series of videos will help you understand the spreadsheet further, as well as what all of these terms mean and how they are factored into your estimates.
Update 2.0
Our first update is now released featuring an updated Job Costing tab that pulls information directly from the Bookkeeping Spreadsheet. A Sales Quote, Work Order, and Sales Order that pulls information from the quoting process to create each of these files to then be sent off to clients, workers, or your supplier easily. A Budget tab that pulls information directly from the Bookkeeping Spreadsheet to analyze information from the previous budgeted year, the actual numbers, and to set a sales target or the next year. A Cost Analysis tab that allows you to compare owning vs renting equipment and delivery vs picking up items from your supplier.
PREFER A SOFTWARE WITH MORE FEATURES?
CHECK OUT THE HEADQUARTERS SOFTWARE
Accounts
Free Trial
Projects
SSL
Storage
Domains
Sub-domains
Your Text
FREE BASIC TEMPLATE
FREE
Sign up for our newsletter
Basic estimating template
Labor, material costs, overhead expenses, and profit
Requires you know how to calculate your numbers
BUDGET AND ESTIMATE SPREADSHEET
$249.99
ONE TIME FEE
Excel spreadsheet - 9 tabs
Advanced estimating template
Input your business numbers and automatically create a budget
Budget automatically calculates amount included in each estimate
Ensures you are calculating and knowing your numbers properly
Estimate, Cost of Sale, Material Catalogue, Labor Time, Production Rates, Labor Costs, Employees, Overhead Expenses, Business Operations, Job Costing
Grows and customizes to your business
BUDGET AND ESTIMATE SPREADSHEET
+
BOOKKEEPING FOR CONTRACTORS SPREADSHEET
$339.98
$299.98
ONE TIME FEE
Budget and Estimate Spreadsheet
Bookkeeping for Contractors Spreadsheet
Fully Customizable to Your Business' Needs
Job Overview Screen Shows Profitability on Each Job
Profit and Loss Statement is Completely Automated
Expense Tracking to Know Where Your Money is Going
Income Tracking to Understand What Services are Making the Most Money
Organize Your Bank Accounts
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this for?
This spreadsheet was created for my hardscaping business, though it can be adapted for any contractor / service based business that includes overhead expenses, labor rates, and material costs that are factored into the final price of a project. This is for the business owner that is not ready or willing to invest an expensive monthly cost that comes with software that will do what this spreadsheet can do for you.
What is included?
This is a spreadsheet that is delivered in an Excel format which can then be adapted into a Google Sheet to allow you to access it wherever you have internet access. The spreadsheet allows you to input your overhead expenses, employees and their wages, materials and their costs, and your production rates to be able to quickly estimate a job and ensure that your total estimate number will recover your costs of doing business while also earning money for your business to grow.
What is not included?
This is a one-time flat fee rate for this spreadsheet and not a monthly software subscription. We cannot offer 24/7 support, though our How-To video series will help set up and use the spreadsheet and we are happy to answer any questions you may have. The spreadsheet will involve some data entry of materials and their costs that is not offered. The spreadsheet does not include production rate tracking, customer relationship manager, or any QuickBooks integration.